I don't believe in that theory that its for geniuses, its all about practice the more practice you do the better you'll do! And its not a month two months or even six months before the exam its every single day you learn something in class!

I found paper 2 a lot easier. . I think we can talk about it now ^^. In section A I was fine and section B I did all except some of Q12. For this one answer sharing should be far easier , I still have them saved on my graphical calculators.

(Original post by Hyaline)
I found paper 2 a lot easier. . I think we can talk about it now ^^. In section A I was fine and section B I did all except some of Q12. For this one answer sharing should be far easier , I still have them saved on my graphical calculators.

I found paper 2 easier as well. Paper one was kind of a nightmare. My brain only clicked into gear when i had an hour left.

Paper 2 was good coz of the use of GDC made it easier to avoid arithmetic errors! How on earth do you integrate 1/(1+x^4) for the continuous PDF to find a! I just put tan inverse of (x^2) but its wrong coz if u differentiate that u dont get 1/(1+x^4)! The vectors and normal distribution qns were god sent..in vectors the question where you had to show the equation of the plane was awesome coz it basically showed that ur entire qn was correct if u got it! The last qn took me a while to show but then through last minute instinct I got the show that ln thing it was such a happy feeling!

Does anyone know how to do the second part of the second question in Part B of paper 1? I sat there staring at it like a lemon for 5 minutes, gave up and had to move on. As for paper 2, how do you integrate 1/(1+x^4)...

(Original post by x-tina848)
Does anyone know how to do the second part of the second question in Part B of paper 1? I sat there staring at it like a lemon for 5 minutes, gave up and had to move on. As for paper 2, how do you integrate 1/(1+x^4)...

Look at the other thread xD, apparently its close to impossible........... I put arctan(x^2) as well initially, but when I tried to confirm using my calculator I god different results. In that case we'd have to sub x^2=u which messes everything up...........

Would people say that these exams were harder relative to last years?
The complex numbers question in Part B in Paper 1 and the Application integration question in Part B in Paper 2 seemed to unsettle alot of people whereas last year all the questions were doable.

The integration last qn was honestly not too bad coz u get s=lncos(pi/4-t) and then for the expression u get s=lncos(pi/4-t) - ln(sqrt(2)/2) which when u simplify becomes s=lncos(pi/4-t)+1/2ln(2) then u had to compare it with v using (cos^2(x)) = 1/(tan^2x+1) = 1/(sqrt(v^2+1)) so s becomes s = ln((v^2+1)^(-1/2) - ln(1/2)^(-1/2) then simplify that you use laws of logs you get the show that thing!

(Original post by MAMDS1993)
why would IB give us a tough integral for 3 marks? Makes no sense! What I ended up doing is trial and error until i got exactly 1 got a=1.38 or something!

haha thats what i did, i think for integrating, i messed it up but for the next section where they said to find the value of a when fx =1, plotting the graph then finding the value of a seemed like a good method, i think i got answer too